Size matters:
You can deduce something about politicians by the sheer size of the particular projects they embrace. Three Republican Governors of Massachusetts alibi'd down the line for the "Big Dig" a steroidal behemoth of a highway project that is now billions and billions of dollars over budget.
All three of these Governors combined a naive' lack of oversight on the project with a stern belief in the Big Dig's glorious destiny....
But that great hole in the ground in Boston nears a lamentable completion, so our new Governor Willard Mitt Romney but go far afield to find a new monument to his emerging greatness.
Alas not six weeks in office he's alighted on "improving" the State Universtiy system by expanding Umass Amherst, raising tuition, appointing the local Babbitts to a "business advisory council" and supposedly when the coast is clear and no one is looking, privatizing the whole shebang.
The Late Right Honorable Huey Long was also obsessed with "improving" Louisiana State University,though mostly he tried to micro-manage the football team from the Governor's Office.
Would that Romney had the same noble fixations.
Umass Amherst has a reputation as a rural party school that is somewhat deceptive. When I went there as a grad student a decade ago the school was filled with lower middle class kids studying unthreatening things like business admin or computer programming. It's a university primarily geared to kids who are too smart for the junior college route and too poor to afford a private school.
Raising tuition isn't going to change things it'll only increase the student loan debt burden of tomorrow's incoming freshmen.
This from a yanker who promised not to raise taxes....except on students.
But ah, a siren destiny beckons to our new governor, cripple select and helpless cohorts with ruinous fees, slash services to nothing, reform education by raisng tuition and increasing class size...AND THEN jet off to D.C. to claim his laurel crown for haiving "saved" Massachusetts with his venture capitalist acumen.
Meanwhile Amherst Massachusetts will decline into a vast exburban wasteland dotted with giant chain stores chargint too much money to overindebted students while the campus sprawls north to St. Albans and West to Albany.
By the time all this happens, Romney will no doubt be Secretary of Education or Vice President and eager to export his modern of no-nonsense higher education reform to the rest of the galaxy.
Ghod help us...

If you have the time, do check out "The Impossible H.L. Mencken" edited by Marion Elizabeth Rodgers. In it at around page 288 the Esteemed Dr. Mencken mentions the possibility that Robert La Follette's independent Presidential campaign might get the 1924 thrown into the U.S. House for a decision. He even goes on to note that if La Follette is able to swing enough votes in the congress his way he could in theory prolong the balloting past the March 1925 inauguration date. At which point, Mencken notes with glee "the whole comedy will be transferred to the Supreme Court of the United States....nine lawyers including one good one, will elect the President. I
give warning that I shall need the stadium to laugh in".
Who is laughing now?
:)

If you have the time, do check out "The Impossible H.L. Mencken" edited by Marion Elizabeth Rodgers. In it at around page 288 the Esteemed Dr. Mencken mentions the possibility that Robert La Follette's independent Presidential campaign might get the 1924 thrown into the U.S. House for a decision. He even goes on to note that if La Follette is able to swing enough votes in the congress his way he could in theory prolong the balloting past the March 1925 inauguration date. At which point, Mencken notes with glee "the whole comedy will be transferred to the Supreme Court of the United States....nine lawyers including one good one, will elect the President. I
give warning that I shall need the stadium to laugh in".
Who is laughing now?
:)

If you have the time, do check out "The Impossible H.L. Mencken" edited by Marion Elizabeth Rodgers. In it at around page 288 the Esteemed Dr. Mencken mentions the possibility that Robert La Follette's independent Presidential campaign might get the 1924 thrown into the U.S. House for a decision. He even goes on to note that if La Follette is able to swing enough votes in the congress his way he could in theory prolong the balloting past the March 1925 inauguration date. At which point, Mencken notes with glee "the whole comedy will be transferred to the Supreme Court of the United States....nine lawyers including one good one, will elect the President. I
give warning that I shall need the stadium to laugh in".
Who is laughing now?
:)

The Gratingest Generation:
Is there a bigger bangtailed yap on this breathing earth than Tom Brokaw?
He was on "Imus in the Morning" today spreading his mellifluous middlebrowed tedium as far as radio syndication can carry it.
Utterly vacuous, he is also got that smug sense of self satisfaction that only comes from a heartfelt belief that being a National Nightly News Anchorman is somehow a job fit for heroes.
The skills that animates a successful news anchorman are none too tough to master. The notion that these are unique men and women of unusual, wisdom, charisma or honesty is sheer nonsense. The Olsen twins or Frankie Muniz could easily be trained to anchor NBC's nightly news broadcast sans any harm to the show's ratings or journalistic integrity.
Hell in a few short years, robots, holograms, or trained seals could seamlessly take over the anchorman's chores, who are these people kidding?
Not our Tom he'd have us believe his years of brown-nosing John Chancellor were somehow a lonely heroic struggle to perfect his craft as-a-newsman. Hell we all know he beat out Garrick Utley for the top job only because Tom has a full head of hair.
Nowadays Tom is talking about retiring in early 2005 and handing NBC Nightly News over to Brian Williams a news personality with no more substance than a billow of steam from out a manhole cover.
But he has a full head of hair and so it goes....
No doubt Tom will keep churning out more stuff like that toadying volume "The Greatest Generation" when he isn't cavorting in Valhalla or snorkling in the Carribean.
Which is just what he was doing when the Space Shuttle broke up on re-entry...
SNORKLING!
I rest my case....
What does that tell you!!!?

"Anyone watching "Meet the Press" lately?"

I haven't...
So has Host Tim Russert started writhing on the floor screeching in
raw hysterical panic over North Korea's nuclear weapons program?
If he hasn't it is only a matter of time.
As everyone who listens to his tirades and pompous effusions on the
"Imus in the Morning" program knows, Tim is haplessly
nuclear-phobic.
EVERY time he goes on that show he ends said appearance with a
voice-a-trembling at the thought of nuclear blackmail from some
punk-@ss 3rd world nation.
I'm not kidding this is what keeps Tim awake at night the nightmare
that some teensy weensy comic opera duchy will get a great big
a-bomb AND FORCE US TO OUR KNEES!!!
politics with good old fashioned homosexual assault... and I do say
that with a smile:>
Okay I kid, the real reason Tim fears the bomb izzat a nuclear
explosion could possibly adversely affect his lavish stock options
and Nero-esque lifestyle.

It's amusing to watch such a quintessential DC "kewl kid" sweating
and serious over such a scenario-no doubt Tim ran out of the press
screening of "Die Another Day" gibbering with fear.
***
Since we have no positive influence whatsover over the DC
punditariat I say we should quietly bombard Russert with "serious"
e-mails compleat with faux diagrams detailing North Korea's
"Q-Bomb" program and their secret project to develop a city busting
"Z-ray".
The poor credulous fool will no doubt lap this nonsense up and
sooner or later he'll be grilling Donald Rumsfeld about "North
Korea's Time Tunnel"...
Russert's an attorney, he couldn't separate fact from fiction if he
tried...
:)

"Anyone watching "Meet the Press" lately?"

I haven't...
So has Host Tim Russert started writhing on the floor screeching in
raw hysterical panic over North Korea's nuclear weapons program?
If he hasn't it is only a matter of time.
As everyone who listens to his tirades and pompous effusions on the
"Imus in the Morning" program knows, Tim is haplessly
nuclear-phobic.
EVERY time he goes on that show he ends said appearance with a
voice-a-trembling at the thought of nuclear blackmail from some
punk-@ss 3rd world nation.
I'm not kidding this is what keeps Tim awake at night the nightmare
that some teensy weensy comic opera duchy will get a great big
a-bomb AND FORCE US TO OUR KNEES!!!
politics with good old fashioned homosexual assault... and I do say
that with a smile:>
Okay I kid, the real reason Tim fears the bomb izzat a nuclear
explosion could possibly adversely affect his lavish stock options
and Nero-esque lifestyle.

It's amusing to watch such a quintessential DC "kewl kid" sweating
and serious over such a scenario-no doubt Tim ran out of the press
screening of "Die Another Day" gibbering with fear.
***
Since we have no positive influence whatsover over the DC
punditariat I say we should quietly bombard Russert with "serious"
e-mails compleat with faux diagrams detailing North Korea's
"Q-Bomb" program and their secret project to develop a city busting
"Z-ray".
The poor credulous fool will no doubt lap this nonsense up and
sooner or later he'll be grilling Donald Rumsfeld about "North
Korea's Time Tunnel"...
Russert's an attorney, he couldn't separate fact from fiction if he
tried...
:)